Panes: Blind items

ABOUT seven hundred and sixty one (761) trees were reported in major media outlets to have been cut in Kabuyao, Sto. Tomas by an elected and incumbent government official without a tree cutting permit from the Environmental Management Bureau to give way to a two-kilometer road.

From one tree, which can grow to as high as 45 meters, Louisville, the leading bat manufacturer in the United States, discloses that about 50 to 60 bats can be made. These trees felled at Sto. Tomas are not maple but pine, a soft wood. Sadly, these would not be the right material for baseball bats. He may not have had baseball in his mind too.

Anyway Onskiuss, had these trees been of the maple variety, these if impounded would have given one of Baguio’s and the Cordilleras’ favourite sports which had been hounded by the lack of equipment for years, the collateral benefit of having raw resource for a stockpile of baseball bats.

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Of course, they would have to be first, machine crafted. Perhaps the many friends who lent their equipment in response to the distinguished office’s request can be as gracious in supplying the machinery and technology for crafting tree trunks to polished bats. I grew up playing baseball using Adirondack bats, which is now owned by Rawlings.

There was also Louisville in the market then. Had Baguio had a branded bat of its own, it could have been named St. Thomas or St. Nick for interesting reasons. Of course, I am only wishing. And yes, Onskiuss with climate change, magnetic polar shifts and jets streams altering temperatures globally it is possible that maple trees could soon grow in the Philippines.

The BBEAL, one of Metro Cordillera’s leading inter-university games unfolded last weekend at the campus of the CCDC in Buyagan, La Trinidad. This impressive annual event undertaken by leading universities in Baguio City and Benguet was filled with excitement and smiles of athletes who flocked to the venue, eagerly looking for this opening day as the beginning of a quest to some local glory. As it was said in times past, “Let the games begin!”

But how true are the rumors, intermittent as rain that the passion of some of these university’s athletes’ overseers and trainers have been severely tested to the hilt, not in the arena of competition but for the habitual delay of their own administrations in the payment of their long deserved meagre coaching allowances?

You see Onskiuss, Eurasian tree sparrows tweeting electronically from our highlands with messages on their beaks have bypassed a concerned office somewhere in Cabinet Hill on their way to a continent near the Indian Sea to say that they have been pleading their cause for almost three months in front of a smiling emoticon? Of course, I wonder if St. John, the Layman hears prayers.

Beauty pageants most will agree do not fall in the category of sport but it appears that in a recently organized contest in our beautiful jurisdiction, one of the esteemed judges holding the qualification of a former beauty queen, a silver screen actress and a law student took time in the social media to lambast the demeanour of her fellows in the same activity as shameless for being ignorant and callous of the hurdles that young lady contestants seeking a beauty queen title for their resume have to endure and surpass.

A woman with respectable credentials who happens to be also in public service and takes men and acquiescent half men to task for exploiting aspiring beauty queens has a lot of guts. Baguio and its humbled citizens should be saddened with the impression our so called distinguished panels have imparted. The disclosure of disgust is an eye opener.

Baguio’s idealistic young must re-think where they stand. What has been revealed is that thought we desire to be venerable but our distinguished leaders are not.

I think judgments of being callous and patently partial from a former beauty queen are fairly accurate descriptions. For which it crossed my mind to ask if viewership in women’s volleyball would be as attractive if the beautiful belles played with athletic tights rather than skimpy shorts?

Onskiuss, in all of these I admit that my greatest fear has always been the beholding that in all our so-called state of erudition and degrees in education the blind are still leading the blind.

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